Google's going to start charging for a once-free peak at the coding developers use to graft onto Google's AdWord feature, and the financial pinch may be too much for some developers.On July 1, search giant Google will start collecting a fee for a service it once offered for free.
The changes, in this instance, affect Internet marketing and advertising companies that rely on data from AdWords, Google's do-it-yourself advertising feature.
Google's move though raises a broader question about whether the firm will make similar changes affecting developer access it allows to other features.
There's plenty of motivation to do so. For one, Google's been under pressure to come up with new revenue sources to prepare for a predicted slowdown in the growth in Internet search ads, now its main source of income.
But the backlash may be great, as evidenced by the negative initial reaction many developers are having to the new AdWords' fee.
In the short term, the changes Google plans to make impact just a sliver of the community that's grown up around it. It impacts people like Jeremy Chatfield, CEO of Merjis Ltd., based in Bedford, UK.
Chatfield must now pay 25 cents for every 1,000 requests his advertising programs make off AdWords. This kind of access used to be free, but Google also capped the number of data requests.
AdWords lets marketers bid on keywords that will appear on search results pages. It's one of two Google advertising facets. The other is Google's AdSense, which lets marketers advertise on Web sites relevant to their ads.
In an e-mail to eWEEK, Chatfield writes of tentative plans to raise, by about 1 percent, the fees his firm collects in order to cover the added costs.
"I'm not happy with the fees," Chatfield wrote. "The 1 percent is not desirable, but survivable."
He adds the problems will be multiplied at smaller ad firms that for business purposes aren't going to raise fees.
At the same time, the sentiment about the changes is also partly positive.
By removing the cap on the number of AdWords interactions, Google's leveling the playing field in a way. Under the old setup, small firms couldn't afford to grow beyond the free number of contacts.
But now they can, and at a cost that executives sounding off in online forums said they can handle.
"It gives us equal access … that is afforded to big clients," wrote someone identifying themselves as Jon Tara in comments about the fees at this forum.
